Based on grounded cognition theories, the current study showed that judgments about ability were regulated by the subjects' perceptions of their spatial height. In Experiment 1, we found that after seeing the ground from a higher rather than lower floor, people had higher expectations about their performance on a knowledge test and assigned themselves higher rank positions in a peer comparison evaluation. In Experiment 2, we examined the boundary conditions of the spatial height effects and showed that it could still occur even if we employed photos rather than actual building floors to manipulate the perceptions of spatial heights. In addition, Experiment 2 excluded processing style as an explanation for these observations. In Experiment 3, we investigated a potential mechanism for the spatial height effect by manipulating the scale direction in the questionnaire. Consequently, consistent with our representational dependence account, the effect of spatial heights on ability judgments was eliminated when the mental representation of ability was disturbed by a reverse physical representation. These results suggest that people's judgments about their ability are correlated with their spatial perception.

This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2011CB711000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 70871110, 71001098), the Special Fund for Beijing Key Discipline Construction, and the Young Scientist Project of IPCAS (No. Y0CX073S01). No additional external funding was received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.